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Let's be honest, this isn't even close to stand-up. If there isn't a live crowd, it's not stand-up. You need that feedback and the regular drilling to find your

by gexla 7y ago

Let's be honest, this isn't even close to stand-up. If there isn't a live crowd, it's not stand-up. You need that feedback and the regular drilling to find your voice. Stand-up comedians find their "voice" by doing the same set, same jokes as often as they can get up on stage. If you're serious about this as a career, you're getting up on stage multiple times a day if you can figure out a way to do it. You're constantly working and re-working your set to a different crowd. There's no way you're going to get high-end comedians on this platform, which means you're going to get people who are relatively new. Doug Stanhope (greatest comedian alive today IMHO) said that you don't want to be putting videos of your earliest crap performances on the web. You also don't want to be putting video of your best jokes on the internet because you get more exposure for people stealing them with little return. Stand-up comedians have already had an alternative for getting up on stage for a long time. It's called podcasting, and many of the greatest comedians do podcasts.

thaumasiotes 7y ago
> you don't want to be putting videos of your earliest crap performances on the web. You also don't want to be putting video of your best jokes on the internet because you get more exposure for people stealing them with little return. > Stand-up comedians have already had an alternative for getting up on stage for a long time. It's called podcasting I'm not seeing the crucial distinction between putting up video of yourself doing jokes, and putting up audio of yourself doing jokes. The value isn't coming from the visual part of the video.
- hobs 7y ago
  Podcasts are not standup, they are ways to riff and show you are funny in a different way - akin to radio spots back in the day.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    A podcast is a prerecorded album. These are common in standup. I have comedy tapes and comedy CDs; a podcast is not different in any way. If you ripped a CD and concatenated all the tracks, you'd have a "podcast".
    - hobs 7y ago
      A podcast is generally a discussion between 2 or more people - not a comedy album.
- gexla 7y ago
  There's an art to stand-up which is different from podcasting. Just like there's a difference between being a live vocalist and podcasting. Look at Bill Burr's podcasts for example, they are far different from his stand-up. Part of a stand-up career is to travel the country and perform the same jokes to every crowd. They aren't exactly the same because you iterate on them every time. Once you have told the same joke X times, then it becomes robust like a method in a program which have gone multiple rewrites and bug fixes. That's a process of not only battle testing jokes, but of finding your voice (finding your voice is more for starting comics.) You're not going to tell the same jokes repeatedly on a podcast. The medium doesn't suit stand-up. Podcast's are more like improv than stand-up. Stand-up comics are more like solo musical acts where you write your material once and then tour with that same material. That act wouldn't work so well otherwise. Yes, radio plays the same popular music over and over. Yes, I'll listen to the same song over and over. Movies? Not so much. After watching a movie, rarely do I want to watch it again right away. Somewhat more commonly I'll watch it again after months or years. Most of the time, I don't ever feel the desire to watch that movie. Music can be enjoyed like a movie or it can be background noise. Comedy for me is more like a movie.
helloiloveyou 7y ago
No SHOW HN is complete without the comment with unconstructive criticism. You can feel officialy launched OP! In my opinion the project is nice and good on you for launching it!
- sixQuarks 7y ago
  I always refer people to the original show HN of Dropbox. Top comment was criticism of how it would never work.
  - anticsapp 7y ago
    Oh, you beat me to it. I was interviewing a far too senior engineer at lunch in Union Square and asked him what the funniest HN thread of all time was. He immediately knew it was the Houston/Dropbox one. Some dude in the thread was like "it would be a trivial task to stitch together storage from five Gmail accounts and outdo your so called product".
danenania 7y ago
While it might be a poor substitute for a live audience, live audiences aren't happening right now in most places, so what's wrong with trying to figure out the best possible substitute? Isn't it still better than nothing? A podcast is a completely different format where performers get zero live feedback by design--with this there's at least an attempt to approximate it.
- gexla 7y ago
  A substitute to stand-up comedy isn't stand-up comedy. Call it something else. Don't do the same thing and expect that it will work. Post this service in the stand-up subs in Reddit and to see the responses from actual comedians. IMO the person who built this service doesn't "get" stand-up and therefore the idea won't work. What might work? A real substitute which isn't stand-up. I don't know what that is or I might build it myself. But there's a lot of ways to create with a comic mind. Also, show me a stand-up comedian who is doing this? If it were a thing, then the majors would already be doing it. Even major comedy specials on HBO are done in front of a large audience. And they aren't repeated. It's like a movie, they work on these shows for months and then it's a one shot deal.
  - danenania 7y ago
    Your feedback is valid and you may be right. In fact, you probably are right--most new things fail to get traction, and I don't dispute that live standup is going to be very tough to approximate virtually. But if you've ever tried to build a product for others before, you know that what users end up liking and using often seems inexplicable and is almost impossible to guess before you start putting iterations of an idea in front of them. There are probably some possible versions of this product that do work, even though most don't. "Post this service in the stand-up subs in Reddit and to see the responses from actual comedians. IMO the person who built this service doesn't "get" stand-up and therefore the idea won't work." Posting it on Reddit for feedback is a great idea. But the important thing isn't whether the people there love it or pan it, it's what can be learned from their feedback. "What might work? A real substitute which isn't stand-up. I don't know what that is or I might build it myself. But there's a lot of ways to create with a comic mind." Getting something imperfect out there for people to use and give feedback on is a much better way to find out what does or doesn't work than guessing at it in your head. "Also, show me a stand-up comedian who is doing this? If it were a thing, then the majors would already be doing it." Come on, you can make this argument against anything new. New platforms don't get famous people on them right away; they have to first get traction with early adopters. The way to tell whether this could be a thing is to look at growth among early adopters, not big names.
asciimo 7y ago
All this may be historically true. But entertainment has been evolving since the birth of the internet, and some entertainers will evolve with it. Yes, this is a poor substitute for conventional stage stand-up. But surely the core of a talented "funny person" can be adapted to this new format. There's an interesting phenomenon with late night hosts doing their monologues from home. They're really bad at it (at least they were for the first couple of weeks). They're writing the same type of material they wrote in their televised audience shows; same type of language, same topics, same timing. It was really awkward. A common critique was, "My 16 year old daughter does better youtube than _______" (e.g., Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers). So maybe this is the dawn of of a new era, and the big TV stars will either adapt or fade away.
- gexla 7y ago
  Love this comment and totally agree. If a service such as this takes off, it will look much different years from now. I'm just criticizing the early ugly attempts. You're right.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
amelius 7y ago
> If there isn't a live crowd, it's not stand-up. You need that feedback and the regular drilling to find your voice. From the FAQ: > Can I turn on my video and microphone? Yes! You are encouraged to share your laughter (giggles, chuckles, and full-on uncontrollable laughter are all welcome). Please remember to minimize any background noise, don't heckle the performer, and no funny business.

by gexla 7y ago

thaumasiotes 7y ago

> you don't want to be putting videos of your earliest crap performances on the web. You also don't want to be putting video of your best jokes on the internet because you get more exposure for people stealing them with little return. > Stand-up comedians have already had an alternative for getting up on stage for a long time. It's called podcasting I'm not seeing the crucial distinction between putting up video of yourself doing jokes, and putting up audio of yourself doing jokes. The value isn't coming from the visual part of the video.

hobs 7y ago
Podcasts are not standup, they are ways to riff and show you are funny in a different way - akin to radio spots back in the day.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  A podcast is a prerecorded album. These are common in standup. I have comedy tapes and comedy CDs; a podcast is not different in any way. If you ripped a CD and concatenated all the tracks, you'd have a "podcast".
  - hobs 7y ago
    A podcast is generally a discussion between 2 or more people - not a comedy album.
gexla 7y ago
There's an art to stand-up which is different from podcasting. Just like there's a difference between being a live vocalist and podcasting. Look at Bill Burr's podcasts for example, they are far different from his stand-up. Part of a stand-up career is to travel the country and perform the same jokes to every crowd. They aren't exactly the same because you iterate on them every time. Once you have told the same joke X times, then it becomes robust like a method in a program which have gone multiple rewrites and bug fixes. That's a process of not only battle testing jokes, but of finding your voice (finding your voice is more for starting comics.) You're not going to tell the same jokes repeatedly on a podcast. The medium doesn't suit stand-up. Podcast's are more like improv than stand-up. Stand-up comics are more like solo musical acts where you write your material once and then tour with that same material. That act wouldn't work so well otherwise. Yes, radio plays the same popular music over and over. Yes, I'll listen to the same song over and over. Movies? Not so much. After watching a movie, rarely do I want to watch it again right away. Somewhat more commonly I'll watch it again after months or years. Most of the time, I don't ever feel the desire to watch that movie. Music can be enjoyed like a movie or it can be background noise. Comedy for me is more like a movie.

helloiloveyou 7y ago

No SHOW HN is complete without the comment with unconstructive criticism. You can feel officialy launched OP! In my opinion the project is nice and good on you for launching it!

sixQuarks 7y ago
I always refer people to the original show HN of Dropbox. Top comment was criticism of how it would never work.
- anticsapp 7y ago
  Oh, you beat me to it. I was interviewing a far too senior engineer at lunch in Union Square and asked him what the funniest HN thread of all time was. He immediately knew it was the Houston/Dropbox one. Some dude in the thread was like "it would be a trivial task to stitch together storage from five Gmail accounts and outdo your so called product".

danenania 7y ago

While it might be a poor substitute for a live audience, live audiences aren't happening right now in most places, so what's wrong with trying to figure out the best possible substitute? Isn't it still better than nothing? A podcast is a completely different format where performers get zero live feedback by design--with this there's at least an attempt to approximate it.

gexla 7y ago
A substitute to stand-up comedy isn't stand-up comedy. Call it something else. Don't do the same thing and expect that it will work. Post this service in the stand-up subs in Reddit and to see the responses from actual comedians. IMO the person who built this service doesn't "get" stand-up and therefore the idea won't work. What might work? A real substitute which isn't stand-up. I don't know what that is or I might build it myself. But there's a lot of ways to create with a comic mind. Also, show me a stand-up comedian who is doing this? If it were a thing, then the majors would already be doing it. Even major comedy specials on HBO are done in front of a large audience. And they aren't repeated. It's like a movie, they work on these shows for months and then it's a one shot deal.
- danenania 7y ago
  Your feedback is valid and you may be right. In fact, you probably are right--most new things fail to get traction, and I don't dispute that live standup is going to be very tough to approximate virtually. But if you've ever tried to build a product for others before, you know that what users end up liking and using often seems inexplicable and is almost impossible to guess before you start putting iterations of an idea in front of them. There are probably some possible versions of this product that do work, even though most don't. "Post this service in the stand-up subs in Reddit and to see the responses from actual comedians. IMO the person who built this service doesn't "get" stand-up and therefore the idea won't work." Posting it on Reddit for feedback is a great idea. But the important thing isn't whether the people there love it or pan it, it's what can be learned from their feedback. "What might work? A real substitute which isn't stand-up. I don't know what that is or I might build it myself. But there's a lot of ways to create with a comic mind." Getting something imperfect out there for people to use and give feedback on is a much better way to find out what does or doesn't work than guessing at it in your head. "Also, show me a stand-up comedian who is doing this? If it were a thing, then the majors would already be doing it." Come on, you can make this argument against anything new. New platforms don't get famous people on them right away; they have to first get traction with early adopters. The way to tell whether this could be a thing is to look at growth among early adopters, not big names.

asciimo 7y ago

All this may be historically true. But entertainment has been evolving since the birth of the internet, and some entertainers will evolve with it. Yes, this is a poor substitute for conventional stage stand-up. But surely the core of a talented "funny person" can be adapted to this new format. There's an interesting phenomenon with late night hosts doing their monologues from home. They're really bad at it (at least they were for the first couple of weeks). They're writing the same type of material they wrote in their televised audience shows; same type of language, same topics, same timing. It was really awkward. A common critique was, "My 16 year old daughter does better youtube than _______" (e.g., Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers). So maybe this is the dawn of of a new era, and the big TV stars will either adapt or fade away.

gexla 7y ago
Love this comment and totally agree. If a service such as this takes off, it will look much different years from now. I'm just criticizing the early ugly attempts. You're right.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

amelius 7y ago

> If there isn't a live crowd, it's not stand-up. You need that feedback and the regular drilling to find your voice. From the FAQ: > Can I turn on my video and microphone? Yes! You are encouraged to share your laughter (giggles, chuckles, and full-on uncontrollable laughter are all welcome). Please remember to minimize any background noise, don't heckle the performer, and no funny business.